World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, places, names High orbital photo of the North Pacific Basin on Siphonia, an Earth with 90% of its water siphoned off. Sea level here is 4.9 km below Earth's. A fertile lowland bristling with volcanoes. The Pacific Rim is mostly icy highlands. Click to enlarge. High orbital photo of the North Pacific Basin on Siphonia, an Earth with 90% of its water siphoned off. Sea level here is 4.9 km below Earth's. A fertile lowland bristling with volcanoes. The Pacific Rim is mostly icy highlands. Click to enlarge.

SIPHONIA

by Chris Wayan, 2004-2009

for you who know life sucks

map - regional tours - Peoples of Siphonia - Evolution - (don't click yet: Gazetteer - Glossary) - more worlds? Planetocopia!

INTRODUCTION

Siphonia's real. You're standing on it. We call it Earth--a peculiar name for a world half-drowned in seas. But not for much longer.

You see, far out in space is a French restaurant a million miles wide. To the customers, who are all the size of Neptune, it's an intimate little place. It's famous for its soups. The chef thinks the day's special is about ready, and pours most of it from the pot where it's been simmering a few billion years. He leaves a bit in the bottom as starter for the next soup.

Sadly for us, Earth is the soup pot. A huge energy-funnel, like a shining space tornado, touches down in the Pacific and sucks up our seas. Salty, fishy, tasty seas! A monster's gourmet delight! In a single day, 90% of our water's gone.

Now fast-forward about ninety thousand years. Tell me: what's Earth like now, after the Big Slurp?

Welcome to...

Map of Siphonia, a world-building experiment; Earth with 90% of its water siphoned off.
SIPHONIA'S FEATURES
High orbital photo of the North Pacific Basin on Siphonia, an Earth with 90% of its water siphoned off. Sea level here is 4.9 km below Earth's. A fertile lowland bristling with volcanoes. The Pacific Rim is mostly icy highlands. Click to enlarge.
WHY BUILD SIPHONIA?

Why waste time on a silly fantasy like Siphonia, you ask? Oh, several reasons:

And she's a bigger, craggier, wilder, more fascinating goddess than you ever dreamed. Ooh, those volcanic cheekbones!

STATE OF THE PROJECT

As of early 2017, I just finished a larger-scale world map, and all regions have local maps and short tours, but ground-level sketches and descriptions of scenes, critters and cultures are still thin.

I feel spread thin myself. So many worlds, so little time, so slow my coding! In 2016 I focused on fleshing out Kakalea, and did; now I'm making regional maps for Inversia, a sister world to Siphonia in which land is sea and sea, land. I hoped to finish those in 2016 but while I've got beta versions of many northern regions on my hard drive the orbital photos need cleanup and laying in; and many southern and especially Pacific regions require serious cartographic work. And then there's Capsica--with a master map, but lacking many local maps and tours. Once these are at least mapped properly, I'll return to Siphonia and flesh it out more. There is an order inherent to all things. Calculation and contemplation, then creation, then survey, then cartography, then ecology, then culture, then dioramas of goofy aliens.

Anyway: Siphonia's still thin on the ground, I know. I shall return.

Map of Siphonia, a world-building experiment. Click a feature to go there.
TOUR SIPHONIA! Click a region above, or choose from:

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